[higherpurpose]

That was exactly my point, too. You shouldn't care about other people's rights just because it affects you. Then you are those people anyway. You should care when it doesn't affect you too.

For instance, you should care that the police is very brutal to black people, even if you are not black and the police acts much better around white people.

Also, he's wrong. It does affect him. All data is analyzed. That includes his data, too. He's just of the attitude that "as long as me or any member of my family which I care about never says anything too critical about the government for the rest of our lives, then we're all good".

In my opinion he's wrong that he'll never be critical of his government. Obama won't rule forever, even if he does like him, and I assume he'll witness at least a few other governments during the rest of his life. Chances are he will become critical of his government, especially if things turn much worse (as the trend is right now). What if the government intends to cut his social benefits? What if the government introduces mandatory army enlisting? And so on and so on. Nobody can stay "non-critical" of the government for too long.

It's also wrong because it's self-censorship: "If I keep my head down, nothing bad will happen to me." The problem is when most people think like that, that's how you end up with tyranny. When little opposition exists, those in power start abusing it.

[geographomics]

> In my opinion he's wrong that he'll never be critical of his government. Obama won't rule forever, even if he does like him, and I assume he'll witness at least a few other governments during the rest of his life. Chances are he will become critical of his government, especially if things turn much worse (as the trend is right now). What if the government intends to cut his social benefits? What if the government introduces mandatory army enlisting? And so on and so on. Nobody can stay "non-critical" of the government for too long.

But I am openly critical of my government (the UK), both online and offline. I just don't feel there's any significant risk in this, or anything else in my online activities. And that is the reason why I haven't changed any of my online habits.

[icantthinkofone]

Straw man arguments all the way around with plenty of assumptions. You presume the government's intention is to monitor him and watch his every move to work against him. The fact is, the government may scan something about him looking for bad guys and, once it finds he is not one of them, quickly moves on.

Just as your badge may be checked when you enter work, or you have to walk through a metal detector, these scans are not looking for the every day man. You can thank terrorists for this and quit blaming the government for looking for them. You can thank the government for looking for them and curse the terrorists.

OT - "you should care that the police is very brutal to black people"

I have to say that this is a blatant lie brought on by the media and the internet scream. While you can find something bad about something at any time, to generalize based on the occasional incident is wrong.